Classicalism vs. PositivismWhat is crime? What makes people commit crimes and how can we stop it? These, and many other questions similar to these, are asked by criminologists everyday. Criminology is an ever growing field, mainly because there is more and more research occurring and new theories linking people and crime coming out everyday. Below the main field of criminology there are many subfields that have different theories and philosophies on what they believe link criminal behavior. Two of the main criminology perspectives are Classical Criminology and Positivist Criminology. Although these two are both studied in the criminology field, their views are distinctly contradictory from each other. These two theories and many others like them all collaborate together and make the field of criminology what it is today.

Criminology is basically “the scientific approach to studying criminal behavior” (Siegel 4). It refers to the study of the nature of crime or way that crime occurs. There are many facets of criminology and this definition is the broad umbrella term that covers the main idea. There are three main areas of significance to criminologists: the development of criminal law and its use to define crime, the cause of law violations and the methods used to control criminal behavior (Siegel 4). Since criminology is a science, it is studied in a scientific way using appropriate research tools and the scientific method. As well as criminology being a science, it is interdisciplinary, meaning that it involves two or more academic fields. Criminology intertwines with sociology, criminal justice, political science, psychology, economics and the natural sciences. One can not come up with the subject of criminology without mentioning what constitutes a crime. A “crime is an act that violates a political or moral law” (Wikipedia). These crimes may or may not be deviant. There are many ways to describe criminology, some include, an objective vs. subjective approach, deductive vs. inductive logic and the interdisciplinary approach. In using the interdisciplinary approach, the two main theories most looked at are classicalism and positivism.

As one goes through the history of crime and criminology, it can be seen that criminal codes have existed for thousands of years dating back to dark ages where punishments for crimes were extremely harsh, mainly using different forms of torture. After the Dark Ages came the Age of Enlightenment also known as the Classicalist Era. During this period of time social philosophers came to rethink the punishment process that currently existed and began putting in place a more rational form of punishment. The main emphasis during the Classicalist Era was on philosophy, there was no science involved. Philosophers such as Baccaria, Bentham, Hobbes and Locke found that human beings are rational creatures and they had the free will to determine whether or not to commit crimes. Their view was based on the utilitarian principle that people’s behavior is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain (Siegel 648). There are different ways that followers of the classicalist view believe can deter crime. Their punishment philosophy is to use the process of deterrence, retribution and incapacitation. Classicalists are heavily reliant on the deterrence theory which basically states that in order to deter crimes the punishment must be swift, certain and severe in order to be effective. As with mostly every theory, there are some problems and criticisms associated with the classicalist point of view. “Classical theory…assumes that rational people will choose to enter the social contract; thus, anyone who commits crime is pathological or irrational, that is unable or willing to enter into a social contract” (Bohm 16). This fails to take into consideration that crime might be rational depending on the person’s social status. Another criticism is how classicalists...

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...Outline the difference between positivism and phenomenologism.
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...crime’.
Discuss.
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...﻿Marie Callinan
What is positivism?
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Naturalism; positivists are committed to the implication of the natural scientific method in social science. The natural scientific method creates a ‘closed system’ in which a limited number of discrete variables are identified, influences are excluded, cause and effect is established, and scientific law or authoritative knowledge is constructed. No acknowledgement of open systems as a feature of both natural and social science is made.
Phenomenalism; only knowledge gained from physical experience is considered valid. Otherwise it is metaphysical and meaningless. If it cannot be subject to empirical tests and corroborated, it does not exist. Happiness, for example, by this criterion, is meaningless.
Nominalism; again concepts must be rooted in physical actuality. Words are mere reflections of things, semantics are dismissed. Scientific concepts are regarded as true reflections of the world instead.
Atomism; attempts definition...

...Positivism emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, and sought to oppose traditional, Classical ways of criminological thinking. The theory tended to look at crime scientifically, in order to produce facts based around the key causes of crime and so, they could attempt to truly understand what kind of people offend and for what reasons. Offenders and offending behaviour had been understood before as voluntary concepts, where people had free will and the choice to commit crime (or not to). Positivists began to observe crime as a more deterministic concept and challenged whether or not people really do choose to offend. Moreover, the overall and fundamental view of an Individual Positivist is that those who become involved in crime or deviance are characteristically different to those who abide by the law. The theory, also known as Eugenics is a primarily, biologically based theory that claims that criminality is individualistic, i.e. crime is committed mainly by individuals as opposed to those in groups.
These theorists put forward the notion that certain idiosyncrasies – either physical or psychological – are similar in those who are criminal, and those who are not in turn, will not fit this particular criteria. Physical attributes such as, having ‘darker skin’ or ‘larger ears’ were believed by Cesare Lombroso to be influential factors for involvement in crime and deviance. (2006) (companion refs) Lombroso believed that there was an “in-born...